A look at my House rules

[Crothian]

After over 8 years of playing third edition I've reached a few conclusions. The game is a lot harder to break then message boards indicate. I keep giving the players more and more and nothing so far has caused problems. It has been really good.

For my latest campaign I'm looking at slowly bringing 3ed to an end and introducing 4e to the campaign world. I did this from 2ed to 3ed and it was very effect. Basically all those rule changes and changes in design theory have to happen for a reason in the campaign world.

Since 4e has complete changed how magic works the first house rule I gave my players was no spell casters. No one complained so it was not an issue with anyone. Magic is the most complex part of the game and getting rid of player spell casters is just going to make the campaign flow better. In the campaign at some point magic is going to start to change and it would really be unfair to and PC Spell casters. I am allowing a non spell casting Bard and Ranger though.

The first thing I told all my players was to come up with a concept. It took them weeks of me asking questions and helping them create a character before any books were opened or mechanics thought of. Now, I'm no idiot and I know each players was thinking about what class and race and such options but they did a good job of really approaching the game differently. In every other campaign I've been with these guys they always did the mechanics first then the concept and background. In my campaigns backgrounds always matter and and items in one's background do make appearances in the campaign. I mention that because I know there are DMs that backgrounds matter less for.

Once they got their concept I had them pick their attributes. They then had to explain using their concept as evidence while they should have the attributes they have. It worked well. The characters all have greater attributes then if we had rolled dice or used point buy. I knew that and it is going to help off set the lack of spell casters.

I gave everyone a bonus feat at level one and will give them a feat per level instead of every three. We've been doing this for a while and everyone likes it. To be fair all bad guys get the same treatment.

Those are the major house rules. It is going to be a very player character driven campaign. There is a meta plot that they can choose to participate in or ignore. They can do as they want but there are potential consequences for what they choose to do and what they choose to not do.

 

[Clay_More]

Howdy Crothian, the all-mighty denizen of post-countage.

Despite their initial simplicity, I think the house-rules you mention make sense. While the character creation process you mention isn't really a "house-rule" per say, but more of an alternative way of addressing the character creation process, I still think it is better choice if you're playing a campaign heavily focused on actual roleplaying, with encounters having the option to be solved without resorting to heavy dice-rolling.
I can imagine a few problems when handling a character from his personality before his stats, depending on the way you create you characters. What if the stats you end up with make it difficult to create the character you had in mind (won't be a problem if you don't use dice-rolling though), will the player be able to mold his character realistically compared to his personality? Especially at lower levels when you don't have access to many feats, skill points and PrC's I could imagine it would be quite a challenge to make an idea fit with the actual stats. I guess it greatly depends on the players.

The idea of a player-driven campaign isn't bad, I've done that quite a bit before (actually, my group tends to turn campaigns into player-driven campaigns quite easily). Many of my players come up with ideas and goals they want to fulfill. A rogue in my group, for example, focused heavily on building up a good reputation amongst the local thieves as well as building a social network amongst the lower nobles in the city, to gain both information as well as possible clients for shady deals. He found the lower nobility much easier to influence, as the higher nobility have a tendency to be a bit more arrogant, and they have a tendency to be very well-set when it comes to economy, getting a constant influx of money from large estates along with their notable inheritance, while a member of the lower nobility has to actually struggle more to keep afloat. It simply made it easier to deal with his clients when they had economic interests of their own.

The idea of giving additional feats is really the most notable difference in your house-rules. I actually don't think that it would be game-breaking in any way, and the way feats are constructed in 3E I actually think it would be a benefit. There's simply too many feats that are considered "must have", leaving little space for specialization. Any melee character "must have" weapon focus, specialization, improved critical, power attack and cleave. Any caster character "must have" spell focus in his more commonly used schools, as well as a minimum of meta-magic and magic item creation feats. So the extra feats actually gives good options.

 

[Runestar]

Weapon focus and cleave as must-have feats? Surely you jest. They rank high on my list of traps a fighter should avoid at all costs!

Doesn't really strike me as major, those proposed house rules. I mean, 3e rules still remain the same fundamentally for most part. You just have a more fleshed out system of character creation, better stats and more feats.

Don't get me wrong, I am not disparaging your efforts, but I think their impact on how you would play 3e is fairly minimal. Only drawback might be the loss of spellcaster support, but nothing you can't work your way around, I guess.

 

[Clay_More]

I might agree that weapon focus can be avoided, but I don't think any melee character would like to go without cleave in a campaign where you don't have access to caster artillery to handle scores of weak mobs. I actually saw someone who had converted many feats into "potential" damage by calculating how much extra damage came from certain feats during a campaign, cleave ranked relatively high.

I do though agree with Runestar that the impact is not really significant, it has minor advantages and drawbacks, depending on how the campaign itself is designed (even though I gotta say, having no spellcasters sounds tempting, makes it easier to make a host of campaign situations that the players can't easily solve with spells).

 

[Runestar]

Well, I don't see what sort of "weak" enemies you would face that allowed you to kill them in 1 hit. It might still be useful as a situational extra attack that comes up like once every 3-5 rounds (since there are simply too many variables - you have to be the one the land the killing blow, must be within reach of another foe). At higher lvs, foes get more hp, so your chances of getting a successful cleave gets lower.

Still, I digress, since this thread is clearly not about evaluating the usefulness of cleave (I made it only as a passing remark).

 

[slwoyach]

The problem I see with giving a feat every level is that it destroys the fighter, with the bonus feats gained through the class becoming nearly insignificant. Perhaps you should create another fighting class to pick up the slack.

 

[Runestar]

Like the warblade?